How long does it take to get a quote for a custom ring design?

Depends on what you mean by a quote. If you mean a number I can text you in five minutes - same day, usually within an hour. If you mean a number I'd actually stand behind and build from, four to seven days. Sometimes longer if the stone needs sourcing.

Here's why the short answer and the real answer are different. A quick quote is just metal weight plus stone cost plus a labor estimate I keep in my head for common settings. Basic solitaire in 14k, round stone, four-prong head, half-round shank - I can ballpark that on a Tuesday morning without opening a CAD file. I've done it enough times. About $1,200 to $1,800 for the setting if you're supplying the center stone, depending on shank width and finish.

But you probably want the real quote. The one that accounts for exactly how thick you want the band, whether we're doing a comfort-fit interior, what shape the stone actually is (an old European cut, say, which sits differently than a modern round and sometimes needs a custom basket), and whether you want hand-milled milgrain or laser-welded. That takes time.

What happens between your email and my quote

For a proper quote I need to do four things, and I do them in order:

1. Look at the stone. If you already have one, I need photos or a video - good ones, not a cell phone shot in a restaurant bathroom. I want to see the table, the girdle, the culet if it's an antique cut. If I'm sourcing the stone, I'm pulling GIA or IGI reports and checking inventory with three or four cutters I trust. That alone can take two or three days.
2. Figure out the setting geometry. A 1.04 carat oval and a 1.04 carat round need different head sizes, different prong placements, different shank proportions. I rough it out in my head or on paper first, then open the CAD if the design warrants it. A simple solitaire doesn't need a CAD for quoting. A three-stone with a hidden halo and tapered baguette shoulders does.
3. Quote the metal correctly. 18k yellow versus 14k white changes the price by about 40% on the metal alone. Platinum adds more. If you want a 2.6mm band versus a 2.0mm - that's more gold, more weight, more money. I weigh the wax model or the CAD data to get real numbers.
4. Add the labor and finishing. Hand-engraving is more. A matte finish is less. French-cut pavé on the shoulders adds about two days of bench time for a good setter. I build those hours into the quote.

Last spring a client named Priya sent me a photo of her grandmother's ring - a 1.18 carat old European cut, slightly off-round, with a small chip on the girdle. She wanted it reset in a six-prong solitaire, 18k yellow, with a high dome shank. She asked for a quote on a Monday. I told her Thursday. I needed to see how the chip sat relative to the prong placement, whether I could hide it under a V-tip or if we needed to bezel it. The quote was $2,600 for the setting. We went with a partial bezel in the end, which added about $300. She picked it up seven weeks later.

Fast quotes are usually wrong quotes

Anyone who gives you a firm number over the phone in ten minutes is either guessing or quoting from a menu. Menus work for chain stores. They don't work for custom work, because custom work assumes the design might change once we see the stone on the wax model. Mine almost always does. I leave room in the quote for that - usually 10-15% tolerance in the labor line - and I tell clients up front.

The honest answer to "how long" is this: if you email me today with a clear photo of the stone and a reference photo for the style you want, I can have a real number to you in about five days. If you walk into the studio with the stone in your hand and we sit down for an hour, three days. If you ask for a quote on something I've built before - a simple reset, a standard solitaire, a basic bezel - I'll send it same-day. Those I keep in a file.

Ask your jeweler how they quote. If they say "a day or two," ask what they're including. If they can't tell you what the labor covers, the quote isn't real.